From Unincorporated Territory [amot]

Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry

This book is the fifth collection in Craig Santos Perez's ongoing from unincorporated territory series about the history of his homeland, the western Pacific island of Guahan (Guam), and the culture of his indigenous Chamoru people. "Amot" is the Chamoru word for "medicine," commonly referring to medicinal plants. Traditional Chamoru healers were known as yo'amte; they gathered amot in the jungle and recited chants and invocations of taotao'mona, or ancestral spirits, in the healing process.

Through experimental and visual poetry, Perez explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of amot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.